Consciousness and Speech

“Your tool of knowledge is Speech, because its boundaries establish the possibilities of the world.” – Baba Rampuri

Baba Rampuri is a Shri Mahant of Juna Akhara, the largest and most ancient order of sadhus in Bharat, with some 400,000 Naga Babas. As Shri Mahant, he occupies a permanent seat in the Grand Council of Juna Akhara. He was initiated in 1971 at the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh Mela on the banks of the Ganga — the first foreigner ever taken into the order. He has lived in Bharat since 1970, where he practices and teaches the oral tradition of the Sanatan Dharma, conducts yajnas and other sacred rites, and hosts retreats and gatherings at his ashram in Haridwar, at Datt Akhara in Ujjain, and at his dhuni in Goa. He is a guru to a number of disciples within the order.

In 2010, at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, he was honoured with the title Shri Mahant for forty years of practice and service. He is also a member of the Council of Elders of Datt Akhara in Ujjain — the akhara of Guru Dattatreya, the Devata-Guru of Naga Babas — and a special envoy of its Pir.

He was born in Chicago, the son of Dr. Stephen L. Gans, one of the founders of pediatric surgery. He grew up in Beverly Hills in the 50s and 60s, among the wealthy and the famous, and became critical of what he calls the culture of spectacle. Having read Indian philosophy, and become interested in consciousness and mysticism in his studies with Alan Watts, he travelled overland from Europe to India in 1969. He came in search of teachings, esoteric knowledge, and the masters who held them.

At an ashram in a small village in Rajasthan, he met Hari Puri Ji Maharaj, who made him his chela, his disciple. At the Maha Kumbh Mela of 1971 in Prayagraj, his guru had him initiated into the Akhara. Hari Puri Ji Maharaj was just about the only Naga Baba who spoke English at the time. He opened Baba to the map of the vast Sanatan Dharma and to the Oral Tradition that is its guide. He left his body two years into Baba’s discipleship. What followed was a long apprenticeship in the ways and means of the Oral Tradition — its society, its relationships, its politics, and its teachings: sacred speech, mantra, tantra, ayurveda, logic, ritual. Baba’s first secret sacred knowledge was the removal of ghee-grease from pots and pans using cold water and vibhuti, ashes. It took him many years to understand anything, and many more years to be able to articulate what he understood.

He founded Hari Puri Ashram in Haridwar in 1984. Before that, in 1977, he had begun teaching sacred speech in New Delhi. He spent a year of research with Prof. Frits Staal at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. He has given satsangs, lectures, and teachings around the world for half a century. A number of his teachings are archived on this site from his online MasterClass in Consciousness and Speech — an innovative 19-discourse series, comprehensive in scope and well-received.

His book, Autobiography of a Sadhu: An Angrez among Naga Babas, was first published as Baba, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi by Random House in 2005 and republished by Inner Traditions in 2010. It has been translated into German, Russian, Czech, Croatian, and Serbian.

In 2008, at the personal invitation of Dr. Albert Hofmann — the greatest living alchemist of his time — he delivered the keynote at Hofmann’s final symposium, in Basel, Switzerland. The lecture series, The Edge of Indian Spirituality, brought traditional Indian thought to the podium and traced its vast impact on the Western contemporary discourse on consciousness.

This site is his archive. Half a century of life inside the akhara — the babas, the dhunis, the Kumbh Melas — much of which no longer exists, replaced by a post-modern virtual world. It was his great good fortune to have witnessed it. You may have a glimpse.